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So here we are coming to a bookstore. Is this a Yeah, it's uh it's actually Not particularly close to where I live, but I come here a lot.
So when you come into a bookstore, what are your expectations? What do you do when you come into a bookstore? What do you want a bookstore to be?
Well, at first I want to make sure you look my books. Ah.
So you go straight to your books? No, not straight, but I have an eye open. You meander to your but I do always check it out. It's embarrassing to admit. Why?
Why would it be embarrassing?
Well, 'cause it's a little egotistical. Yeah, but it's um Your livelihood. check out their own books. And Alright. There.
Okay.
Well, they got them at least. And this new one, the eleventh hour, is the is the twenty-third. Wow. There's 23 books still in print. Do you have trouble reading because of your eye?
Or how do you do it? Yeah, I mean I still I can still read, but but I h do find that I use iPads m in a way that I never used to. Because there's light and because I can adjust the size of the type.
So I I never ever read a book on an iPad, but now I do. Does it change the experience in any way? Not really. Because a lot of people feel that the tactile aspect of the title. Yeah, I also used to scribble on books.
You know, I would make notes in the margins. And I don't do that now. Look at these nice chairs. Nice chairs. When you I think of you as incredibly widely read.
Do you find that how do you divide your time between reading and writing and what do those hours look like? You know, when I'm actually... seriously writing?
Well, it depends what I'm writing. If I'm writing a novel, I tend not to read a lot of fiction. Because it I don't want it in my head. I don't want it in my head. And when I finished writing a novel, I tried to catch up.
Do you miss Your characters and the events in the books when you're finished? No. Yep. I'm really done with them when I'm done with them. Really, it's like expiating a curse.
Yeah, just, you know, okay, thanks a lot. Goodbye. The title of the book is The Eleventh Hour. Um Why the 11th hour? a kind of an undercurrent of Death Foreshadowing death, shadows in and of themselves.
what death is and so on and so forth. Why? Well, it's well For a start, I'm 78.
So that's one reason why. Um for another I had a fairly intimate encounter with death, you know, and got away with it. But it makes you think, you know, and so I thought this idea of running out of time. But something I had on the brain. And and also I was thinking There's a A famous essay.
By Edward Saeed. Um called on late style. where he he talks about how Great artists. Approach. the final act.
You know, um I mean, in the case of the essay, because Edward Saeed was very knowledgeable about classical music, he he focuses on composers. But to put it very simply, The idea prop s proposed is that either people become serene. No, they become accepting. and calm and the work arises out of that sense of Both. contentment with life.
and with its conclusion. or they become angry. I mean, rage against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas said. And I remember thinking The idea is that it's either or.
Some writers go one way, artists go one way, some go another. I thought, I don't in my view, I don't think it's either or. I think you could be peaceful on Tuesday and angry on Wednesday, you know. Um But I wanted to consider that, that idea about how people face. the final act.
No. And I mean that's why it's called the Eleventh Hours because in some way all the characters are and countering that. How much Do you, at this stage in your life, Revisit. the haunts of the the the key places of your childhood, of your upbringing, of your past.
Well, every time I've been to Bombay. which I still call Bombay. Um I always make a visit to my old neighbourhood.
So it's just um for me it's a magic space, you know, and I go up there and I feel in a in an enchanted space. But is there something about that space, that enchanted space, that you need now more than ever, or that you look at differently because you've reached That last walk up the hill.
Well, I look I look at it from a from a distance now. You know, but Every time I go there, it's enormously emotional. Just just be in that in that little. Batch of this this huge city. Nope.
much bigger now than when I was growing up, because it's ex it's enlarged so much. But so there's a huge metropolis and in this huge metropolis there's this tiny little dead-end alleyway. Oops. which for me is the source of everything. You have not lived there in a very, very, very long time.
You subsequently lived in Britain. and the United States. Um And yet you're still so connected with that. seminal piece of you. Yeah, I just think the place where you're born and raised has a magic for many of us, you know.
that nowhere else does. Right. I think is in our in our age when people move around so much. Is a kind of plural idea. You know, there's a sort of home which is your childhood home.
about which you have a certain kind of deep feeling. And then there are homes you make for yourself. And and those can be in more than one place, but they can all have the feeling of home. Yeah. Y you've been a citizen of three countries.
What's home now?
Well, I mean, home now is New York City. I've lived here for Well, twenty-six years. Um and um I feel very comfortable. Yeah. There are cities like this one, like New York, which let you in very easily.
I mean the story of New York is a story of arrival. People come here from all over the place, not just from abroad, but from elsewhere in America. You know, the defining song of New York is about coming here to make it. Sure. And so I've always thought one of the things that attracted me to New York City was that, you know, you arrive and you put your bags down and you're a New Yorker.
When you Received your American citizenship and were sworn in as a citizen. I think it was 2016. Yeah, just before the. Twenty before the twenty sixteen election. What did you feel as you were being sworn in and becoming a citizen?
I was quite surprised by how emotional it was. You know, and and um 'Cause I'd been living here for quite a long time before that happened. I mean I'd had a green card and various other ways of living here. Um I remember getting into a cab leaving the office where I'd been sworn in. and being driven back through the streets of the city.
And it felt different. I thought oh. I try to belong. And it felt very good. Did the feeling that you had when you were sworn in as a citizen?
become fractured or altered based on What's happened since, both in public life in the United States and to you.
Well It's a hard time, that's for sure. You know, it's a hard time in America. But it's a hard time all over. You know, I mean and actually the three countries that I've spent my life thinking about. And so India and England and and America.
are all going through not dissimilar kinds of hard time. this trend where you see anti-immigrant Sentiment. Around the world and in the places where you've lived much of your life. As something of an expert on immigration, having been one twice, been an immigrant twice. What do you see when you see that?
What do you feel? What do you worry about?
Well, of course. I don't like it, you know? And I think the way my way of answering it has been to write Stories. And essays, but Which Celebrate. immigration instead of denigrating it.
Because I think Great cities like this one would not be what they are. were it not for integration. Immigrants have made New York what it is, and immigrants have made London what it is. And actually even in Bombay, it's an interesting city because It contains many different kinds of Indian.
So I've always seen. Migration as one of the defining elements of our time, you know, because people have in the last hundred years. partly because of the invention of things like air travel. More people have moved across the world than in the history of the world up to that point.
So So immigrants have really made the modern world. You you wouldn't have Steve Jobs if you didn't have an immigrant. Sure. so much of the things that we know use every day. in the work, you know, are the creation of immigrant communities or individuals.
And so I've always seen it as something to celebrate, to say this is a way of enriching life. rather than impoverishing it. But now you're seeing it erode. Yeah, maybe there's enough of us who still think this way. No, it just y we just have to win the argument.
One of the Major themes in your life. has been the promotion of free speech and Creating a climate of safety for people who engage in. free speech and writing. Where are we on that front? Again, not in a very good place, I think.
And that's the final story in the collection, The Old Man in the Piazza. is kind of an allegory of that. kind of allegory. In fact, free speech, to my great surprise, language itself turned into a character. female character.
She just walked into the story and sat down in a corner. I hadn't expected her at all. Um I like it when your mind surprises you. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview. after this break.
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Well, it's about an old man who sits in the corner of a town square in an unspecified city. Watching the world go by. Just an ordinary old man. Just just an old man with a cup of coffee and a... Crossso.
and nothing much to do. Um And what happens in the story is that at the beginning of the story, there's a A repressive time. And everybody feels very constrained in what's possible to say and what it's Not possible to say. And then it changes and everybody starts opening up and arguing with each other and disagreeing and and the the town square becomes a How about both? disagreement.
And he sits there and watches it all because he enjoys being just a spectator at the feast. And then By a series of pit of chances, he gets sucked into the arguments. and begins to see himself as an arbiter. to begin s offer opinions and tell people which way they should go and then That doesn't work out so well for him. But there is this other character in the story, which is language itself, and she.
In the beginning of the story, she's very frustrated because of the restrictions on speech. She sits at the corner of the square in a bad mood. And then she She's one of the forces that makes the change, and then things get better for her, and she's surrounded by young men sucking up to her. She likes And At the end of the story, as things begin to get wrong again, she Her mood darkens again.
So it's a kind of allegory of how.
Societies move when they're closed and how they move when they're open. and what what it means to move from between those two things. At the end of that story people can no longer speak. And the last line of that story is Words fixed. Yeah.
Um That's pretty. startling and scary. Yeah, it's supposed to be. I mean, it's supposed to say if we reach a point in our lives in which our language is no longer. able to express what we want and need from the world.
Then we're in bad trouble because language is what we all primarily have, and I think. I've always seen writers As the guardians of the language, No, that it It's our job to care for it, you know, to make sure that it retains its its richness and variety and openness and possibility. You know that's what And I think if art can do that, if literature can do that. then it's a way of encouraging the world to do it. And that boils down to free speech.
And that boils down to free speech, yes. A reflection on The last portion, the twilight of a life, and all the things that you contemplate and think about and consider. But it's also a pretty political book.
Well, I think everything I do ends up having political dimensions, you know, but it has its What I want is for it to be political, but also to be funny. It is funny. I mean, I want funny is funny is for me more important than political. Really? Yes.
I think if you can make people laugh, you're doing something worth doing. I know, but your whole life. You're one of the most famous men in the world. Because Of what's happened to you, which wasn't funny, which wasn't funny, as well as for anything you've written. Yeah, but I.
res kind of regret that. I don't like the fact that I'm famous for the wrong reason. I would like to be well known for the things I have written. Because that's what matters to me. What you hope for as a writer is to leave behind a shelf of books.
You want to be able to say, like, from here to here, it's me. If you're my kind of writer, you want to write things that endure. You want to write stories. that will have legs, you know, that people will want to read. In multiple generations and after you're gone.
I mean, I like it, the fact, for example, Midnight Children, my early book, my second book. It came out in 1981. I mean, it's a long time ago. And the fact that younger readers still like it, still find it has meaning for them.
So that it's crossed.
some of the early frontiers of generations. Do you write? and push yourself With that in mind? It's always there. I mean the thing that pushes you is the story itself.
I mean actually when I'm writing the story I'm not thinking about anything except the story. But what does it need? What does it want? I asked the characters. And often I think of writing as a process of listening.
You know, you you listen to your characters. And they tell you what they need, and then you try and give it to them. Reading knife listening to you in interviews and and various reading about you since the attack and certainly um as a result of the fatwa and so on, living in hiding. You do not seem Vengeful. You do not seem bitter.
You do not seem angry. Is that just your public persona, or is that actually possible? No, I think that's I think that's who I am. Yeah, I think uh I understood very early on that all those things you mentioned that I could have been would be very destructive to me.
Okay.
destructive to me as a person and certainly very destructive to me as an artist. And so I thought, just put put that to one side. No. Uh you don't have to Be that person. I find it extraordinary that it's possible.
To put it aside, most people would say, well, this is a clear recipe for a life of PTSD.
Well I do have a therapist. And I asked him At what point to list for me the Symptoms of PTSD. He said what are the classic symptoms? And he told me. And I said, but I don't seem to be having those symptoms.
So what's wrong with me? And he said, well It's because you're badass, that's the technical term. What a great compliment. I said, that's the psycho, that's psychotherapy technical term. He said, yes.
I said, okay.
Well, I'll take that. Have you Forgiven the person who attacked you? No. No, I've not forgiven him, but I've also not not forgiven him. I've just dismissed him from my consciousness.
That's the worst you can do to somebody. Yeah, I just think, you know, indifference is the greatest punishment. You have always talked about being good Regardless. Mm. Um And that idea shows up in a lot of your work.
Why do you think that you are godless? I think it's just Partly because I came from a very secularized family. You know, I mean, my Other bits of my family were much more religious, but my own, my parents were really not. And so we were brought up in a. and a very secular atmosphere.
And that's remained. The case. For me. And yet In your life, in your writing, You've had what you consider to be miracles, the miracle of your survival after the attack. Yes, they're not divine miracles, they're scientific miracles.
But there's a spiritualism In Some of what you've lived And certainly a lot of what you've written. one does have to think about. I think that is that most of us, I think Have a sense of ourselves, of of whatever we call ourself, the I. it. as being something not only to do with our physical body.
Yeah, that It's what Philosophers have called the ghost in the machine. You know, that there's a s there's a thing inside us which is us and the body is its vehicle. And Even if that's an illusion. It's an illusion which we all have. And so it has has to be looked at if you're a writer.
Yeah. Um I mean I Also, have a sense of that, whatever it is that you mean when you say I. Good. is not just my hands and legs and Eyes. Yeah, it's it's something else.
Is it your soul?
Well, one of the ideas I think I may be wrong into this because I may have misremembered it, but I think Aristotle maybe had this idea. that there was such a thing as a soul, but that it was that it was not immortal. that it was mortal. that it that it died when the body died. And do you believe that?
Well, it's one way of thinking about it. I don't believe it. I mean, I don't, I don't, I, I, I, my belief is that we have this one life and that's it. Where does wisdom figure into your sense of your own life? how your experiences have rippled into your work.
I don't know. Wisdom, what is wisdom? To my mind, it's a way you look at experience. Nobody arrives in the world wise. You know, we're all idiots when we're born.
Wisdom becomes an accumulation of knowledge based on experience. And and being able to look at that clearly and see what it means for you. and what it might mean for other people. I think if you're if you're uh any good as a writer, you examine your life very closely. Uh um I mean leading the examined life.
is is the the fundamental of art. You have to look very carefully at everything that happens to you and try and see what it means and to what happens to people around you as well, not just you, you know. would be a boring writer who was only interested in himself. Do you have any sense of the I if you were summing up what this extraordinary Seen by the world life that you've lived. How does that In form.
Um what you need to write about and what you are writing.
Well, I'm as a writer, I'm always looking for the same thing. I'm looking for something I haven't done before. I really have a horror of being repetitive as a writer. That's what I'm looking for, new ground. And then eventually There'll be this shelf of books and people can make of it what they will.
What would you like your literary legacy to be, do you think?
Well, more than 23 books.
Well, aside from inches on shelves or feet on shelves. Just, you know. Books that stay alive. in readers' minds. There there are there are books old books which were very celebrated in their time, which no longer seem to have.
A readership. Yeah. I wouldn't like to be one of those writers. I'd like to be a writer that people still want to pick the books off the shelf. What are the ingredients?
of the kind of book that you believe endures.
Well The absolute center of it is story. We are And it's a phrase I've used quite a lot that I think as human beings one of the best ways of defining ourselves. is that we are storytelling animals. We are the only creature on the earth. that does this peculiar thing of telling itself stories in order to understand the kind of creature that it is.
We are narrative beings. We have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You know.
So our own our sense of ourselves is narrative. And so we respond very strongly to stories. And And you know, when a child is born, Okay, first the child needs to feel loved and safe and fed and so on. But quite soon after that it says, tell me a story. And That need for story is at the heart of what human beings are.
And so what you hope to leave behind is a few good stories. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts.
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